Today on the BiggerPockets Podcast we are thrilled to bring back one of the most popular guests we’ve ever had, J Scott.

Last time we dug into the process of house flipping, but today we dig much deeper into the “business” of real estate investing and explore ways to automate your real estate investing business so you can spend less time working and more time doing the things you love. We also learn all about J’s venture into house flipping at a distance as well as his foray into spec building (and the lesson’s he learned… and things you should avoid!)

This show is incredibly inspiring and can help any new or seasoned investor improve their game – especially the 5 tips for automating your business, found toward the end of the show!

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About Author

Brandon Turner (G+) is the BiggerPockets.com Senior Editor and Community Director. He is also an Active Real Estate Investor (Flips, Apartments, and Buy-and-Hold), Entrepreneur, World Traveler, Third-Person Speaker, and Husband. Come hang out with him on Twitter!

16 Comments

Very interesting podcast especially since there is a lot of discussion regarding Milwaukee which is my home town and where I invest (buy and hold). I have done rehab here — mostly for rentals which is a lower amount of rehab (mostly light cosmetic and mechanicals), but I have done one “higher end” rehab which was originally for a flip but turned into a buy and hold. I think there are some rehabbers, but not very many.

Hi Jay, Josh and Brandon,
I really enjoyed this podcast guys. Jay I have been checking out your site and wanted to ask you about when you first started flipping. You state that you had 25.000 in cash and that you intended to rehab 4 that year with a 15k profit for each. My question is how did you accomplish this time wise. Or did you accomplish this. I would think that the rehabs would take minimally 4-6months, so if you are not “double dipping” into the 25k how is this accomplished. I currently have 3 rentals all of which we have rehabbed and held so this logistic timeframe is baffling me.
Thanks and Congrats to all of three of you on your success and sharing it with all.

Thank you for the amazing podcast guys. I really enjoyed the section on automation. It was super insightful on how you broke it down into different areas.

J, I’m in the Maryland Live! area and it would be an honor to be stacked by you at the tables. Both of my older brothers are professional poker players (online mostly) so I know the lifestyle well! Hope to see you around.

Great podcast. J, you are a wealth of information. Thanks Josh & Brandon for continuing to do these podcasts and finding guests who genuinely want to share their information, successes and failures, for no other reason than education. There’s never a pitch at the end to “go to my website and today only, as a favor to Josh…..” I appreciate that.

You talked about one of my worst pet peeves….the scam of having to use permit expediters in all the large metro Atlanta municipalities. It’s nothing but a shakedown by former permit office employees. I too have sat there in “the bullpen” waiting for hours while one of the expediters strolls up to the locked door and says to the receptionist “buzz me in please” and goes back to sit in one of the permit intake offices. Half of them sit on their ass and don’t do anything anyway until one of their expediter buddies comes to pay a visit with Braves tickets or some other gift.

I’ve spoken to the new head honcho with the City of Atlanta, who is trying to clean house but it is going very slowly. The laziness and corruption are so ingrained into the department that it’s going to take years to fix it.

@Brandon Turner, I am getting ready to flip a house and it also has a perfectly good roof that is ugly. It has light grey 3-tab shingles. Roof was replaced in 2007. It is only 1 layer. I was considering throwing a new layer of architectural shingles over the existing 3-tabs… the worst part is the gables are on the sides not the front… so the ugly, but perfectly good roof is in your face… I initially wasn’t planning on doing it, but when you said that you had difficulty selling, I perked up! It now seems like I have to put new shingles on…

Thanks for the comment. Yeah, I think the roof was only one aspect. I don’t know if it would have sold better, but it was the first thing people saw when driving up, so I think it musta played a part. In the end, though, the house was simply too big – people didn’t want something like that. Best tip for flipping: Flip stuff people wanna buy.

What is the title to the book that Josh Turner and J. Scott were referring to that has not been published? Is there a waiting list if you would be interested in purchasing a copy of the book? Thank you.

J, awesome content in the podcast, as well as in both of the books. Thank you for continuing to share your knowledge with us. You mentioned that there was not a lot of rehab activity / investors in Wis, which is what sent you there. May be a simple question, but, without first hand knowledge of the market, how did you learn of the lack of activity there? Are there certain indicators you were looking for when picking a remote location? If so, can you give some insight into what those indicators are and how you found them?

I found this podcast very useful. I really liked the idea of getting several bids from contractors to give you a better idea of what and how you are going to rehab a property to then take it to another contractor so you can sound like you know what you are doing and you the get a more reasonable bid. Awesome podcast thanks guys.